I.M. Beck - quote unquote

As I write this, the attacks on Iraq have begun and Saddam Hussein

(or someone who looks like him) is promising the Iraqis that they are going to be triumphant.

One doesn't expect him to tell them to bend over and kiss their derrieres goodbye, I suppose, and every boss going into a competition of any kind, be it a soccer coach, a party leader or a mad dictator, is going to say he's going to win and win hands down. Now, where have I heard this before, in a Maltese context?

It's ironic, isn't it, how when the world seems to be poised to go to hell in a hand basket, we're perched on this wind-blown rock in the middle of an irrelevant pond, arguing about whether or not we should join the safety of the European bloc or remain isolated, bobbing about in the maelstrom.

Even more ironic is the fact that Doctor Alfred Sant's alternative is to propose a partnership with, Heaven help us, the United States. Perfect timing as always, my good man, proposing this exactly while they are busy antagonising our neighbours, both to the north and to the south.

I'm not going to say which of the leaders is the psycho in my headline - there are those who say that George W. is the prime candidate for this moniker while others, especially those witnessing the battle-cries being trumpeted by the loon in Baghdad, think that perhaps Saddam is more fitted to the mad cap.

Oh well, by the time you read this, we might have seen the war in Iraq come to an end. Or not. Whatever, there's not much we can do about it, so we can go back to contemplating our own navels.

Babble

Among those who practise the babble of psychology, much is made of the process of transference, where the patient is described as carrying out this esoteric process when he projects his own conflicts and issues onto others who are patently not suffering therefrom.

I'm not saying that Doctor Alfred Sant should be lying down in a darkened room, with an avuncular type in a beard taking notes as the reclining one tells him all about his past life, of course, because plainly Doctor Alfred Sant is perfectly sane. Well, as sane as all our politicians, anyway, but that's not the point.

The point is, Doctor Alfred Sant's insistence on Dr Fenech Adami making a clear and unequivocal declaration that he (EFA) will respect the results of the upcoming election is fertile ground for planting the seed that Doctor Alfred Sant is transferring his own and his party's issues with the democratic process onto someone who is patently incapable of not being democratic.

Just for the record, the Malta Labour Party in 1981 failed to respect democratic principles when it governed despite being in the minority. The Malta Labour Party in government between 1971 and 1987 used violence and intimidation as a means of enforcing its views on the population (of course, Doctor Alfred Sant was not in charge of the government at the time, even if he was quite a big-wig in the party for at least some of the time).

Just for the record, again, in 1998 it was Doctor Alfred Sant who refused to respect the result when he came up with the ludicrous argument that the election whopping that he had received was illegitimate.

Just for the record, yet again, the Malta Labour Party in opposition has been using intimidation and threats against, if no one else, me, for the last four years.

The Malta Labour Party has interpreted the result of the recent EU referendum, when its position was defeated by a thumping margin, as a win and Doctor Alfred Sant was instrumental in mobilising the party's supporters by convincing them, cynically and in the most patently self-serving way, to go onto the streets and celebrate their defeat at the polls, ignoring the very real possibility that there would be violence.

So where does this man get off, demanding a declaration that Dr Fenech Adami will respect the results of the election, when it is clear to anyone of the meanest intelligence (in other words, anyone who does not believe that E(Manwel) Cuschieri is the be-all and end-all of well-adjusted broadcasting) that it is Doctor Alfred Sant and his machine that seems to have an inherent psychological block to accepting poll results?

The psycho-babblers would have a field-day. It would be interesting to read what Doctor Alfred Sant's apologists are saying now, incidentally. Are they still so infatuated with him that they ignore the now patently obvious fact that he is no better than his predecessors in the Malta Labour Party?

Do make your mind up

Doctor Alfred Sant's spin-machine is gearing up and no mistake.

Having buried Swaziland in the Mediterranean months and months ago and having interred PartnerSHIP with almost indecent haste as soon as it became obvious that the Maltese electorate had shown the good sense to dump it, now the machine seems to have spun madly out of control and come up with the wild and wacky notion that it would be a vote catcher to say that if the MLP is elected, it might be a good idea to have a referendum.

Again.

First the dear fellow says he's not going to respect the result of the referendum (which he didn't, to be fair to him), then he says that it was a worthless exercise, then he says that his side won (which is a wonderfully wacky interpretation of a 19,000 vote defeat), then he says that it was all irrelevant and now he says that it will all be done again if the electorate is fool enough to believe his empty promises and elect him.

Which is it, Doctor Alfred Sant, irrelevant, won, lost, to be repeated, to be consigned to the waste-paper basket? What? Make your mind up, please, unless you have decided that switching positions every five minutes is the impression you want to give about the way you intend to run the country if you're made boss again.

Come to think of it, that was the way you ran the country for those 22 months when we gave you a shot at it, before you made a dog's dinner of the whole thing and called it a day.

And while you're about making up your mind, could you please let us know whether VAT is a good thing or a bad thing? If for no other reason than to put your faithful fellow-travellers, the GWU, out of their misery as to whether they should delete the page in their history that tells us how they stood up heroically against VAT.

Sums à la Fredu

In his prettily-crafted prose in Pravda (aka this very newspaper), Doctor Alfred Sant last Tuesday laid down the dictum that the government had failed to achieve the 50 per cent + 1 of eligible voters to win the referendum, thereby confirming that a) he knows no law, b) he knows no sums and c) he knows no vocabulary, because being dead makes you ineligible to vote and he counts them among the eligible.

In the same pretentious prattle in Pravda, the dear fellow went about the business of telling us what he and his government will do when it gets into power.

Well, to be precise, what he told us was what issues he would address but what he was going to do about them was left, as always with this man, to our imagination.

He will do things to help families cope with the problems they face every day. Fine and dandy, mom and apple pie will come next, but what he will be doing and, more importantly, how he will be paying for it are not points he thought that it would be necessary to cover.

You see, it's clear, when Doctor Alfred Sant lays down policy, that he knows that he knows best and therefore it's not for us, mere peasants and toilers among the ranks of the Great Unwashed, to be given any insight into the way his mind works. After all, Dr Mario Vella, a man of no mean intelligence himself, finds himself stupefied with awe when contemplating the IQ of his Great Leader, so who are we, simple folk that we are, to dare expect that Doctor Alfred Sant would bother telling us what he's going to do and how he's going to pay for it?

Atlantis found

Are you in need of sustenance and not inclined to make a mess of the kitchen in fulfilling the needs of the inner man?

Trot along to Birkirkara, almost opposite that estimable watering hole known as the Four Seasons and go into the Atlantis Kebab House.

It is, without doubt, one of the best such places you can find, clean (but then all of them are) and comfortable, with the usual wide range of kebabs and salads and with the added attraction of home-made pitta (delicious) and pizza and other dishes and the even greater attraction of real German beer.

Cheap and cheerful it certainly is, so value for money is a given, but it would be cheap even if it cost half as much again. Go there and go there often, the people who run the place deserve it.